


Bang

by vanitashaze



Series: Alabanza [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: ADHD Lance, Autistic Keith (Voltron), Bad Sex, Consent Issues, Cuban Lance (Voltron), Disability, Everyone Just Has a Lot of Issues, Future Fic, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gender Issues, Good Sex, M/M, Miscommunication, Neuroatypicals in Space, Self-Esteem Issues, Trans Male Character, joyful consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 14:50:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11580303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanitashaze/pseuds/vanitashaze
Summary: “You are toast, Kogane,” Lance chants, aflush with impending victory, “you are toast, you are yesterday’s burned bread, I’m gonna kick your ass so hard you’ll have bruises for the next week, I am the fucking king of Rainbow Ro—”“Do you want to have sex with me?” Keith blurts out.Koopa Troopa goes zooming off the road, hurtling into total blank nonexistence, which is convenient, considering that’s where Lance’s higher reasoning just went too.“...Okay, distracting your opponent into losing doesn’t count as winning,” Lance says. “I’m not putting that up on the tally board.”Keith and Lance’s first time doesn’t go like either one of them planned. That’s definitely a good thing.





	Bang

**Author's Note:**

> Happy early birthday, Lance! This wasn't at all the story that I set out to write, but apparently it was the one that I needed to. Content warnings in the end notes; if you are sensitive to issues around sex, gender, disability, and/or consent, I recommend reading them.
> 
> On the setting of this fic: Bang takes place in the Alabanza 'verse a few years before the events of Alabanza, but it can also be read as a stand-alone.

****It turns out that it takes about forty minutes and less parts money than Lance and Pidge had dredged out of the space mall fountain for Hunk to whip up an adaptor for the Mercury Gameflux II. This is a fact which Lance will never, _ever_ let Pidge forget, considering that one of them is a dashing sharpshooter-slash-pilot and the other is a supposed child prodigy, so if they were both dumbasses not to check whether the Gameflux and the Castle both ran on alternating currents (answer: they do) and therefore only needed a little plug-to-plug action, it’s pretty damn obvious which one of them in this situation is dumb and which one of them is dumber.

 

“Forgive me if I was a little distracted by the space cow,” Pidge had hissed the first time Lance crowed about it to their face.

 

“Nope,” Lance had said. “Never forgive, never forget, that’s my motto. Galaxy Quest: great movie.”

 

“Galaxy Quest was ‘never give up, never surrender’, do you even watch the movies you quote?” Pidge had snapped. “And anyway, you _should_ surrender, because I’m going to steal the Gameflux back from you and leave something squishy in your bed in revenge for stealing it from me in the first place.”

 

“Oh ho, just you try,” Lance had said, which they then did, and succeeded at, and Lance also got a faceful of squishy when he rolled over in the middle of the night to find one of his throw pillows had been sneakily replaced in its pillowcase with a loosely sealed plastic bag full of expired space goop.

 

But then Lance stole the Gameflux back with Hunk’s help — “This is a bad idea,” Hunk had sighed, and then helped him pick the lock anyway — and replaced Pidge’s shampoo with purple hair dye, which is a classic for a _reason_. It made Lance burst out laughing for a straight month every time he saw Pidge in their green paladin suit because they looked like Barney, and Lance learned the “Barney is a Dinosaur” song specifically to serenade Pidge with it any time they were in the same room, which he did with relish, at least until Pidge had gotten ahold of a brown hair dye for themselves and orange hair dye for Lance.

 

The point is, by now Pidge’s hair is totally fried and so is Lance’s, they’re deadly prank enemies but also have a lot of fun, and the Mercury Gameflux II is in Lance’s possession the night he invites Keith to hang out with him and play Mario Kart in the common room because everyone else is doing something boring and unproductive, i.e. sleeping.

 

It’s not as weird a decision as it would have been a year and a half ago. Hunk is still Lance’s bestie forever and ever, amen, but Keith has actually become a not infrequent companion on nights like this, when Lance’s brain is too loud and fast and Keith’s brain is whatever it is and Queen Mab doesn’t feel like giving either one of them a ride off to dreamland.

 

It’s taken a while for Keith to warm up to everyone other than Shiro, who Keith has apparently known since he was a bright-eyed if still glaring fifteen-year-old baby cadet and Shiro was an uptight, self-righteous seventeen-year-old — yep, Lance remembers Shiro at that age too, although he tries not to hold it against him — but Keith is freer with all of them these days.

 

He laughs. He makes jokes, even if they’re not funny to anyone but him. He lets them know when he’s hurt — or at least when he can tell that he’s hurt, because Lance is slowly learning that sometimes Keith just _can’t_ tell — instead of slinking away like an ornery tomcat going to hide under the porch. At least part of him seems to actually believe that they won’t kick him out on his newly-purple ass after Haggar’s druids had gotten ahold of him for the worst weekend trip ever and decided to turn the Galra in him up from 5 to 11. He even tentatively participated in the last round of the prank war, although he made Lance swear on Blue that Lance would never tell Pidge for fear of reprisals.

 

He still refuses to join in on group hugs and looks angry all the time and _sounds_ angry all the time and doesn’t remember that Lance even _existed_ at the Garrison, even though first with blowjobs and then with his magical gender journey Lance had singlehandedly fueled the Garrison gossip mill for months, so… it’s a work a progress.

 

Keith is being especially weird tonight — jumpy and distracted and even worse at Mario Kart than he usually is, which is saying something, and he keeps staring at Lance and looking away, in a way that’s even more intense than his usual laser eyes. Lance tries not to make a big deal out of it, because the dude’s got a unfortunately massive case of resting bitch face but that’s not Keith’s fault, that’s just Keith, but the laser eyes coming from someone who looks Galra is… unsettling, to say the least.

 

Lance kind of half-heartedly thinks about asking Keith what the fuck is going on with him, but while he and Keith talk about a lot of things these days, they definitely don’t talk about their feelings. If Lance wants to talk feelings, he goes to Hunk. He’s not sure who Keith goes to. Maybe Shiro. But Shiro’s asleep, or at least trying to convince himself that he will be any minute now, so Keith can play Mario Kart with Lance now and figure out his feelings in the morning.

 

“So dead, so so so dead, get off the track because I am comin’ through, you are eating my dust,” Lance crows.

 

“No way,” Keith protests, but he sounds more nervous than anything, which — yeah, Lance would be too, Lance is _crushing it_ , Lance is going to win and his tally on the scoreboard is going to beat Pidge’s and he’ll be the _best_ at something, even if it’s just a videogame, it’s gonna be awesome —

 

“You are toast, Kogane,” Lance chants, aflush with impending victory, “you are toast, you are yesterday’s burned bread, I’m gonna kick your ass so hard you’ll have bruises for the next _week_ , I am the fucking king of Rainbow Ro—”

 

“Do you want to have sex with me?” Keith blurts out.

 

Koopa Troopa goes zooming off the road, hurtling into total blank nonexistence, which is convenient, considering that’s where Lance’s higher reasoning just went too.

 

“...Okay, distracting your opponent into losing doesn’t count as _winning_ ,” Lance says. “I’m not putting that up on the tally board.”

 

“Just forget it,” Keith mumbles.

 

Lance stares at him. “Wait, you actually meant it?”

 

“...Yes?” Keith says.

 

“Oh,” Lance says, to buy time before his mouth can spit out something more useful than _the fuck?_ , because of all the people Lance would have expected to get that request from, Keith was really damn low on the list. _Coran_ was higher on the list than Keith. Scratch that, Keith wasn’t even on the list at all.

 

Lance is half expecting Pidge to pop out of the ceiling vent and yell, “Gotcha!” But Keith actually looks sincere, if nervous and awkward, although Lance is going to discount the awkward because that’s pretty much where Keith makes his home when he’s not righteously pissed off or unconscious.

 

Keith even _sleeps_ awkwardly. He used to sleep fully clothed with his shoes on, like it was the London Blitz and dude had be ready to run at any minute — Shiro had to forcibly march him down to a clothing store last year and make him pick out pajama fabric he liked after Keith nearly gave himself nerve damage from falling asleep with his boots laced up too tightly — and he still sleeps with his Galra orphan knife/sword slash bloodthirsty comfort object wedged between the mattress and the wall, as Lance had found out when he’d once gone to wake Keith up in the middle of the night for an emergency meeting when Keith’s intercom was broken and Keith had nearly pulled it on him.

 

The point is, Keith is an entire factory of awkward, but that’s not actually why he wasn’t on the list. Keith wasn’t on the list because he’s _gay_ . Kinsey six, rainbow-colored soul, a lot of ugly words that Lance refuses to repeat even in his own head, man-lovin’-male Galra hybrid who still manages to be weirdly hot, in a very alien, very purple way, and it’s that hotness — and not the fact that Lance _likes_ the guy or anything, they’re still bitter rivals even though they’re not actually bitter anymore and they’re kind of getting to be good friends — that makes Lance say, “...Sure. Yeah. Let’s do sex.”

 

“Oh, okay,” Keith says, managing to sound vaguely surprised even though he was the one who asked. “Do you need to finish your game first? Pidge showed me how to cheat it so it replays a level.”

 

“Nope, no time like the present, let’s go, chop chop,” Lance says brightly, hopping off the couch, then: “Uh, but let me lock up the Mercury Gameflux II first. Otherwise Pidge is going to steal it back.”

 

*

 

They manage to make it out of the common room with a minimum amount of awkward, even though Keith is still staring at him and Lance nearly forgets where he’s been hiding the Gameflux for the last week because he’s too busy telling his brain to _shut the fuck up_ , but they immediately run into said awkward as soon as they step out into the corridor.

 

Lance’s room is to the right and Keith’s room is to the left and so Lance turns left and Keith turns right, and then they have to do a weird do-si-do so they don’t go marching off in opposite directions. This is made significantly harder by the fact that the corridor isn’t very wide, and Lance is trying hard not to touch Keith any more than he has to, because everyone knows that the dude doesn’t like to be touched. That’s gonna make tonight… interesting, but maybe getting your dick wet outweighs the discomfort of having to touch the person who’s providing the aforementioned wet, and anyway there’s a lot of ways to have sex where Keith doesn’t have to be touched very much at all.

 

“Hey, so can we go to your room?” Lance asks hopefully, and then lies: “My room smells _terrible_ right now, I think the giant bugs are dying in the air vents again.”

 

Keith looks reluctant at that, like he’d been hoping to make Lance be the one to have to wash the sheets afterwards, or just march back into the common room and bend Lance over the couch right there — Lance really hopes it’s not the latter, Pidge will never let him hear the end of it if they walk in on him and Keith doin’ the do — but tough luck, Keith is gonna get a great orgasm so the dude can do his own damn laundry, and after a moment, Keith says, “Yeah, I guess it can be my room. But don’t you need to get the, uh, stuff? That you need?”

 

“Nah, I think I have the stuff I need on me,” Lance says absently, trying to remember if he still has a non-expired condom in his wallet, or if he even _carries_ a wallet around anymore — whoops, no, he doesn’t, never mind, but he’s on T and they both regularly get stuck and prodded into sparkling health by Castle medical, so it’ll be fine.

 

Keith looks super confused at that, giving Lance what he probably thinks is a subtle once-over but is about as subtle as an eighteen-wheeler on a residential street — seriously, Lance thinks, what the fuck is Keith looking for? — but he still follows Lance down the corridor when Lance starts heading off to Keith’s room, trailing behind Lance like he’s the kite at the end of the string, which is way less aggressive than Lance would have expected of him. Maybe he has performance anxiety or something.

 

 _This is a bad idea_ , a little part of Lance whispers as he walks. _He’s your friend_ . But Lance is the _king_ of bad ideas, and anyway he can fuck his friends, he can totally fuck his friends, and the fact that his longest and strongest friendship and platonic-soulmate-ship is with Hunk, who’s sex-neutral at best and usually closer to sex-averse, is a total coincidence. Hunk is an outlier and should not be counted — although actually Keith is the first person Lance is going to fuck on this ship, Keith is the first person Lance is going to have fucked in a _while_ , oh _man_ it’s been a dry spell, so Keith is kind of an outlier himself and will probably remain that way.

 

Hunk’s ace. Allura’s firmly uninterested. Pidge just turned sixteen, so… _no_ . Lance would fuck Shiro if Shiro asked him, but Shiro won’t ask him, even though Lance knows from Garrison gossip that Shiro is bi, because Shiro is snappish and overbearing and _way_ too ready to die, but he’s also a fundamentally kind man, and he doesn’t really like Lance very much when you get down to brass tacks.

 

Coran may be higher on the likelihood list than Keith, but Lance isn’t fucking Coran. Lance has standards. Maybe not a lot of them, but he does.

 

Coran is a shapeshifter, though, so maybe _Keith_ would fuck Coran, which is a really weird thought that needs to be immediately answered and/or exorcised from Lance’s brain, so Lance asks him, “Hey, would you fuck Coran too?”

 

“Too?” Keith squeaks.

 

“I mean, you’re gonna be fucking me,” Lance says. “Would you fuck Coran too?”

 

“I guess I probably could. I mean, I’d rather not, but I _could_ if I needed to,” Keith says, sounding hella uncomfortable, which — fair enough, last two people in the galaxy situation and all that, Lance isn’t gonna judge anyone’s sexual choices because then he’d have to start judging his own.

 

“Hey, no worries and no judgment, just curious,” Lance assures him. “You know, like the ‘fuck-marry-kill’ game? Only in this case it’s the ‘fuck or not fuck if you’re the last two people in the galaxy’ game.”

 

“So… you were being hypothetical,” Keith says.

 

“I sure hope so,” Lance says. “I don’t really want to be one of the last two people in the universe, unless the other person was Hunk. Not that you guys aren’t great too!”

 

“Oh,” Keith says. “Then… yeah. I don’t really want to fuck Coran.”

 

“But shapeshifter though,” Lance says, but Keith just looks at him blankly at that, so maybe Keith’s not into older men, or maybe Keith’s _thing_ is more specific than most of the guys Lance has had sex with since he transitioned, who were either content with blowjobs in weird places — Arby’s bathroom at 2AM, very weird, smelled so strongly of citrus cleaner that it made Lance gag for a reason other than the guy’s dick, 1 star, would not patronize again — or gone after Lance/deigned to accept Lance’s offer specifically because of the trans thing, because they were curious about what it’d be like to fuck a boy with Lance’s particular set of bits. Most of _them_ would probably have been super happy with a shapeshifter; maybe Keith is just picky.

 

Lance is super duper not. Lance is what is colloquially known as _easy as fuck_ , because he knows exactly who he is — he’s loud and difficult and the things he said as a girl that ended up with him getting agreeably pounded into the wall with his underwear on the floor and his dress hiked up around his waist just make him sound creepy as a guy, so when it comes down to it, the people who sleep with him do it not because they want to listen to him but because they want to get off, which is 100% fine by Lance, because he likes sex and he likes being wanted and he usually gets off too.

 

Lance wouldn’t have pegged Keith as having this particular kink, but life is full of surprises and actually, so is Keith once you get to know him, so maybe the guy really is coming out of his shell and getting adventurous. Good for him.

 

“Enter,” Lance says grandly when they reach Keith’s door, gesturing expansively to the room behind.

 

“Why are you inviting me to my own room?” Keith grouches, but steps through anyway.

 

Keith’s room is as sparse as Lance’s is chaotic, clothes packed neatly away in their drawers and shelves clear of any debris, although Lance nearly trips over a lone backpack right next to the door, which he’s never actually seen Keith carry around before, why do you need a backpack on a warship — but then Lance gets distracted by the stack of books by Keith’s bed, because a) of course the guy is weird enough that he gets _books_ instead of e-books on his tablet, and b) is that a battered paperback copy of _A Wizard of Earthsea_?

 

“Is that Le Guin?” Lance asks.

 

Keith smiles. “Shiro gave it to me. I had it on me when we left Earth.”

 

“You are a man of many surprises,” Lance says. “And many pockets. I would have pegged you as more of a Hemingway kind of guy.”

 

Keith makes a face. “He’s got weird gender stuff.”

 

Oh, Lance thinks. Never mind. Guess I won’t ask about _The Left Hand of Darkness_.

 

“Okay!” Lance says instead, clapping his hands together, which Keith jumps at a little. “Let’s get down to business. Clothes off?”

 

“Uh... sure,” Keith says. “But I should probably take this off first,” which is when he unbuckles something and pulls his _giant Galra knife/sword_ out from its sheath at his back, what the hell, does he really love the thing that much that he has to have it on him when he plays Mario Kart in the middle of the night?

 

“Yeah, good call, I’m already getting poked tonight, I don’t want to get stabbed too,” Lance says, eyeing the knife nervously. “You sure you don’t have any more of those on you?”

 

“Well, _yeah_ , but I can leave it in my boot when I take them off,” Keith says. “Um, I don’t really have any other furniture in here, and up against the wall works okay, but bed is probably easier?”

 

“Sounds good!” Lance says, and bounces up onto the mattress, patting the bedspread next to him invitingly. Thank goodness Keith moved out of his old room last year after one of the giant bugs that’ve been plaguing them for the last eighteen months died in the air ducts, and the new room doesn’t have an alcove bed; Keith’s still pushed this one up into a corner right up against the wall, so they have that to deal with, but at least Lance doesn’t have to deal with a ceiling too.

 

Keith sits down next to him and gets as far as taking off his shoes and socks, carefully placing them and the boot knife off to the side of the bed, and then just stops and stares at Lance as apparently is his wont, and then asks, “You said clothes off, but do you want _any_ clothes?”

 

And Keith probably doesn’t mean anything by it, he’s probably just being an awkward fucker per usual, but his words send a stab of hurt through Lance anyway, and maybe something a little like anger, too — and you know what, Lance has had plenty of sex with varying amounts of clothes, a few times where he could barely get his pants pushed down far enough in time, but Keith was the one to ask, so this time Keith can go ahead and see what see what he’s getting.

 

“Nope, naked time,” Lance says, “help me get these off,” because skinny jeans look great and these have enough stretch to move but they’re pretty damn awkward to get out of by yourself, and Keith does, nearly getting kicked in the face when Lance wiggles all the way out — smooth, McKlane — and Lance is going at his usual superspeed for these things, letting the pace carry him away into just pure sensation, far away from thinking, and Keith is right there with him.

 

 _Really_ right there with him. Lance’d had a few idle thoughts of angry hate-or-at-least-rivalry sex with Keith, but he hadn’t actually expected this level of matched ferocity from him, taking all the frantic energy Lance is putting out and returning it twofold. Maybe Lance had misjudged Keith, and Keith was one of those guys who wanted to stick it in as fast as possible, but then Keith gets Lance’s underwear off and freezes with this look of panicked realization that would be hilarious if Keith wasn’t still fully clothed and Lance wasn’t completely naked and it wasn’t freaking Lance the hell out.

 

“Um,” Keith says.

 

“Okay, let’s get these off!” Lance says hurriedly, going for the button of Keith’s pants, and mercifully Keith goes along with it, letting Lance shuck off his pants even as Keith hesitates at the hem of his own t-shirt, but if Lance is going to be completely naked here then Keith is damn well gonna be too, so Lance helps him get the t-shirt off, yanking it off of him so fast that Keith’s hair ends up sticking out in all sorts of directions, and Keith’s the one to get rid of his underwear, kicking it away in the vague direction of his pants.

 

At least Keith’s sort of got an erection going. That’s gratifying.

 

“You said you had stuff? On you?” Keith says, trying and failing not to stare at Lance’s crotch with this expression on his face like he’s trying to do advanced trigonometry. It’s really not that complicated, Lance thinks with a touch of annoyance, it’s not that different from what the guy’s probably used to, it’s just faster and easier, and Lance would really appreciate it if Keith would stop looking at him like _Lance_ is the alien here.

 

“Yeah, I thought I did, but I don’t,” Lance says. “But it’ll be fine, I’m on T. Testosterone,” he clarifies at Keith’s utterly bewildered expression.

 

“Does that… change things?” Keith asks, failing even harder not to stare at Lance’s crotch.

 

Oh, please, God, let him know where babies come from, Lance thinks, and then a terrible thought occurs to him. “You’re not a virgin, right?”

 

Keith snorts, and for the first time tonight, he looks like he actually has a handle on what’s happening. “No. Definitely not.”

 

“Oh, good,” Lance says, relieved. “I mean, it’s not like I have anything against virgins or anything, I was one of those once, they’re just harder, you know?”

 

“I’m pretty easy,” Keith says.

 

“Yeah, I’m noticing that,” Lance says. “So you want to bang me, right?”

 

“Yes,” Keith says, then frowns and says, “...Wait, what?”

 

“You know, not anal, the other one,” Lance says, and he really hopes that Keith isn’t going to make him say it out loud, he really hopes that Keith isn’t that mean, so he makes an O with his thumb and forefinger and sticks one finger on the other hand through, but then it occurs to him that he could be implying that Keith has a small dick, and Keith’s pretty average but guys don’t usually like to hear that even if it’s true, so Lance adds another finger just in case.

 

“Um,” Keith says. “Is that what you… I mean, I guess I can. Uh. Do you have a condom?”

 

“Nah, like I said, I’m on T, it’ll be fine,” Lance says, waving a hand dismissively. “Do you want to be on your back? I can just ride you, that’ll be pretty easy.”

 

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Keith says, who’s looking a little bit like Dorothy after she crash-landed in Munchkinland, wide-eyed in a way that says part of him still thinks he’s in the tornado. Well, you wanted the full Lance McKlane experience, you got it, Lance thinks, a little meanly.

 

“Sweet, okay, lay down,” Lance says, and it only occurs to him then that maybe Keith would prefer doggy-style, something a little more familiar, but Keith’s already on his back, looking up at Lance, nervous but determined; Lance could do reverse cow… person or something, but he’d rather not be hit with any surprises while his back is turned, so normal cowperson it is. He’s really gotta think of a better name for that.

 

“You can hold onto my hips for leverage, that helps,” Lance says. It actually does fuck all for leverage, Lance is gonna be the one doing all the work, but he’d rather that Keith is distracted and doesn’t try to touch Lance anywhere else. Keith _can_ if he really wants to, if he’s that curious, but… Lance would prefer that he didn’t.

 

“We really don’t have to do, um, _this_ , you know,” Keith tells him. “If you’re not comfortable —”

 

“No, no, I’m good,” Lance says, trying to figure out the logistics of sitting on Keith’s dick with the minimum amount of looking like a fool. “Save a horse, ride a cowboy, right?”

 

“What?” Keith asks, looking confused and increasingly uncomfortable.

 

“You’re Texan and you’ve never heard that expression?” Lance asks, but that only makes Keith look more unhappy, and then Lance manages to get himself positioned and sinks down onto him and ow, that’s not fun, that dull jab of pain that’s closer to a period cramp than a happy sex feeling, but whatever, it’ll go away once he starts moving and things get loosened up. Lance can’t quite catch his wince, though, or the little noise of discomfort that pops out of him, and Keith frowns.

 

“Are you okay?” Keith asks.

 

“Eh, it’s been a while, I just need to warm up,” Lance says, but Keith just scowls even further.

 

“Even I know that lubrication is a thing, dickhead,” Keith says, and before Lance knows it he’s getting ungracefully dumped off Keith’s lap and Keith’s dick to land in a heap next to him, nearly kicking Keith in the face in the process — which serves him right, Lance thinks angrily, what the fuck?

 

“What the fuck was that?” Lance demands.

 

“You sounded like you were hurting,” Keith says. “Like I said, even I know it’s not supposed to be that —” and then valiantly struggles for a word that isn’t _dry_.

 

“Oh, no, please, finish that sentence,” Lance says, icily. “That _what_ , Keith?”

 

Keith makes a pained face and doesn’t reply.

 

“I told you, it’d been a while,” Lance says. “And… we were going a little fast. But hey, no big deal, and synthetic lube works too, got any of that?”

 

“If that didn’t work for you, we can do something else,” Keith says, a prospect which he looks downright relieved at.

 

Ah, so _that’s_ what this is about, Lance thinks, and mentally kicks himself a few times, because of course Keith didn’t want what Lance usually offered, Keith is _gay_ and that’s not where gay guys want to stick their dicks, although that does bring up the question of why Keith is trying to have sex with him in the first place. But Keith is hideously uncomfortable around strangers — which has only gotten worse since the whole Galra-fication thing — and the only other guys he knows who swing his way are Shiro (nope) and Coran (also apparently nope); maybe the idea of him settling for Lance isn’t that strange after all.

 

Okay, Lance thinks, option #2: blowjob it is, but when he tries to reposition himself, Keith awkwardly shimmies away, and they play some sort of weird game of cat-and-dick around the bed for a good thirty seconds until Keith blurts out, “What do you want me to do?”

 

“I’m not picky,” Lance says. “Just don’t pull my hair or do that thing where you get too excited and choke me.”

 

“No, for you,” Keith says. “What do you want me to do?”

 

“Uh, let me get you off?” Lance tries.

 

“You first,” Keith says firmly. “How do I… What do you want me to do?”

 

“Um,” Lance says, because Keith keeps repeating himself in the _least helpful way ever_ , and Lance’s idea of what tonight was going to look like is rapidly unspooling, he really doesn’t have a roadmap for what the fuck is even happening right now — he knew that Keith was awkward but Jesus, he didn’t know that Keith was _this_ awkward — so to buy himself time to figure it out (or more accurately, for Keith to get over whatever blowjob aversion he’s got going on), he says: “We could just make out for a while?”

 

Keith smiles, looking relieved. “I can do that,” he says. “I’m good at that.”

 

Most people say that, but it turns out that Keith really is. Now that they’re not moving at turbospeed anymore, Keith is still intense, focused in a way that reminds Lance that this is the guy who had a full-on string conspiracy board going in his desert fortress of solitude, who spent months teaching himself celestial navigation and surveying, all to search for a friend that the whole world told him was dead — but he’s also unexpectedly slow and sweet, the tone and speed of his movements almost closer to the few girls that Lance has slept with than any of the guys, savoring rather than pushing towards the finish line.

 

Keith really likes this, Lance realizes, and feels a little guilty for pushing Keith so fast at the beginning; but it’s not like Keith had said anything, either.

 

After a while, it becomes clear that Keith has a definite pattern to his technique — a long, careful dance of different kinds of kisses and touches that Keith does in the same order every time. It’s actually pretty endearing, and so very Keith, and so _very_ nice — someone taught this boy well, Lance thinks — but he keeps hitting a ticklish spot on Lance’s side with unerring accuracy, despite Lance trying to subtly squirm away each time. After the fourth pass, Lance has to catch his hand before Keith hits it again and Lance accidentally spazzes out right against his face. Keith looks up, startled.

 

“I’m ticklish there,” Lance explains. “So, you know, touch me there, I may accidentally headbutt you in the face. But…” He moves Keith’s hand a little further down. “Here is good.”

 

“Oh,” Keith says. “Okay,” and the next time around he bypasses the ticklish spot, palming over Lance’s waist and hip like Lance had showed him.

 

He twitches away whenever Lance tentatively places a hand on him, though, but hey, it’s not exactly a surprise, Keith doesn’t like to be touched. Lance didn’t know that you could be touch-averse _and_ like makeouts, but stranger things and all that, so Lance focuses on the kissing part instead and valiantly tries to figure out someplace he can put his hands that won’t make Keith make wince, and then it occurs to Lance that he could just ask.

 

“You don’t like being touched, right?” Lance asks. “It’s cool if you don’t, I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing with my hands right now.”

 

“I do, but kind of… specifically,” Keith says. “So just don’t worry about it,” and tries to go back to kissing his way down Lance’s neck, but Lance scoots away far enough to keep talking, because — that’s new information.

 

“Wait, really?” Lance asks. “Huh. Specifically _how_?”

 

Keith scowls. “Just… specifically,” he says.

 

“Well, that’s helpful,” Lance says sourly.

 

“I’m sorry I can’t just _tell_ you, okay?” Keith snaps. “It’s… difficult. Like I said, don’t worry about it.”

 

Lance rolls his eyes. “Right, because I get off on being a total dick and not worrying about if you feel good or not.”

 

“Really?” Keith asks.

 

“No,” Lance says, “no, I don’t, that was sarcasm, I do worry, of course I worry. Fine, if you like touching but you can’t _tell_ me, fuck words. Trial and error?”

 

“...I guess we can try that?” Keith says.

 

Lance reaches out to place a light hand on Keith’s chest, hoping he won’t spook him. “How does this feel?”

 

“Not great,” Keith says tightly, and he’s not moving away this time, but Lance can see him really wanting to, and Lance has actually seen Keith look less pained after getting _stabbed_ , so: no, not that. Lance tries one of the long, sweeping touches that he likes himself, but Keith tenses up at that, too, and when Lance hits his back, Keith actually shudders in revulsion.

 

“This is going to take a while,” Keith says, grimly.

 

“I’m sorry, do you have somewhere else to be?” Lance asks. “I don’t.”

 

“No,” Keith mutters. “Just don’t do that touch again, or I might accidentally headbutt _you_ in the face.”

 

“Duly noted,” Lance says, and moves on to touch type number four.

 

Four just makes Keith make an expression like he’s sucking on a lemon; five makes him go so completely still that Lance snatches his hand back like he’s been burned; and when Lance tries a little scratch of fingernails for six, on the off-chance that Keith might like a bit of pain with his pleasure, Keith actually snarls at him, his claws briefly popping out before Keith retreats back into himself, looking absolutely horrified at his own reaction, so… no; and on to seven.

 

It’s really not a heartening process, watching Keith alternate between miserable and meh. Maybe Keith had been right, maybe Keith really would get more out of whatever mess tonight was shaping up to be if Lance just stopped trying and failing and just left him alone, there are plenty of ways to do this where Keith barely has to be touched at all — and then Lance palms Keith’s hip, firm and still and heavy, expecting Keith to squirm away, but Keith just blinks at him consideringly.

 

“...Okay,” Keith says.

 

Lance squints at him. “Actually okay, or you’re saying okay so I’ll stop bothering you okay?”

 

“Actually okay,” Keith says. “Kind of… nice.”

 

“And if I do this?” Lance asks, moving up Keith’s side with the same firm touch.

 

“Still nice,” Keith says, and then the touch moves to Keith’s middle back, and Keith squirms away again and hurriedly says, “Not nice!”

 

“Okay, so just let me know when I hit something bad,” Lance says, and then thinks twice and adds, “or when I hit on something good.”

 

Keith makes an unimpressed face. “Isn't that kind of disruptive?”

 

“What, talking in bed?” Lance asks.

 

“You know,” Keith says. “To keep saying no.”

 

“I really fucking hope not,” Lance says, staring at him. “Because I hope you’d listen if I actually told you no about something.”

 

“Well, _yeah_ , of course I would,” Keith says, like that makes any damn sense at all.

 

“Look, I don’t care how many no's you have,” Lance tells him, even though Keith’s maze of no does feel pretty shitty to be the one trying to run through it, but Lance can just suck it up and deal, because the alternative is leave, and for some reason, even though tonight has been awkward and weird, he… doesn’t want to do that. “Just tell me if I hit a no or if I hit a yes or if I hit a meh or maybe or whatever, ‘cause otherwise I’m flying blind here.”

 

That seems to hit a chord in Keith, because he stares at Lance for a moment before he says, “...Okay.”

 

“So… do you want to make out some more?” Lance asks, awkwardly.

 

“Yeah,” Keith says, leaning back in, “yes,” and Lance tries to put his newfound if limited knowledge to use as he reaches over to meet him.

 

It’s slow going, but it’s not… bad. Actually, it’s kind of nice to go a little slower than Lance is used to, and Keith sure keeps Lance’s brain plenty occupied, three barely-audible muttered _no_ ’s or _maybe_ ’s to every hesitant _yes_. Keith also hasn’t planted himself as far away from Lance as he had before — although Lance does notice with a touch of annoyance and something that he refuses to call hurt that Keith is very careful to keep his hips angled away from Lance and his icky bits — and Keith even makes a few little happy humming noises when Lance hits on something particularly good, which is gratifying and also pretty hot.

 

Maybe Keith isn’t touch-averse as much just not used to it, Lance thinks. Keith isn’t good with change and he’s especially not good with other people when new things are thrown into the mix, even though Keith had said that he wasn’t a virgin, that he _definitely_ wasn’t a virgin, _there are plenty of ways to do this_ , but that leads to a line of thought so fucking depressing that Lance pulls a mental U-turn and just tries to focus on coaxing more of those deep-throated hums out of Keith.

 

Keith’s making that pretty difficult, though, with the way he’s trying to push that focus right back onto Lance, distracting him with kisses and touches that are still sweeping and patterned but getting more purposeful, promising in a way that makes Lance shiver even though Lance is not really expecting much from the main event. Lance is still getting pretty into it, though — and then Keith goes for one of Lance’s nipples, thumbing it in a way that would probably feel really nice to someone who had any nerve endings left there but is doing fuck all for Lance.

 

Lance thinks about just letting Keith go for it — guys like having their nipples played with, they’re more sensitive than girls’, Lance knows from experience that’s _definitely_ a thing, it probably wouldn’t take that long before Keith moved on to something else — but… Well, Lance had asked Keith for his no’s, and Keith has been delivering, copiously if reluctantly. Maybe Lance can have a few, too.

 

“Yeah, sorry, that’s not gonna work,” Lance tells Keith. “I can’t feel anything there.”

 

“Like — not sensitive?” Keith asks.

 

“No, I mean, I _can’t_ feel anything there,” Lance says. “Literally nothing. Nada. Top surgery — looks great, destroys your nipple nerve endings.”

 

“Oh,” Keith says. “That… kinda sucks.”

 

“Eh, they weren’t that sensitive to begin with,” Lance says, “although I did have them pierced at one point, that was fun, maybe I should do that again,” and then remembers that fighting evil involves getting hit in the chest on a regular basis, so maybe not.

 

Keith shudders. “Why would you _ever_ put a needle there,” he mutters.

 

“Because it looked awesome and all the cool kids were doing it,” Lance says, and doesn’t mention that he was kind of drunk at the time. “Same time I got my first stick-and-poke tattoo, actually. You know, the one —”

 

“— on your ass,” Keith says. “Yeah. I know. We’ve _all_ seen it.”

 

“Well, you’re free to touch that one,” Lance says cheerfully. “Plenty of nerve endings there. But, uh... if you could avoid the surgery scars, that’d be great. They’re not painful to touch or anything, it’s just… weird.”

 

“How many do you have?” Keith asks. Lance blinks at him.

 

“Two?” Lance says, then, “Actually, you know what, three, but you can touch the appendicitis scar all you want, I have zero appendix-related dysphoria, no inner turmoil over the fact that my species can no longer eat raw meat.”

 

“Okay,” Keith says. “You can touch my scars if you want, I don’t care.”

 

“Good to know,” Lance says, and tries to go back in for more kissing — nipples aside, that had been really nice, maybe they can do that for a while longer, Keith doesn’t seem that impatient to finish things — but Keith gently pushes him back, looking as serious as a man before a firing squad.

 

“So... what do you want?” Keith asks, ominously.

 

“...Pardon?” Lance asks.

 

“What do you want?” Keith repeats.

 

“What, like blowjob or handjob?” Lance asks, confused. “No preference.”

 

“Is that what you — I mean — what do you want?” Keith asks. “For you? Specifically?”

 

“I told you, no preference,” Lance says, annoyed at having to repeat himself for the fifty thousandth time — is there, like, a record stuck on a loop in Keith’s brain somewhere? — and then Keith actually _rolls his eyes_ , the jerk, so Lance protests, “Hey, _rude_ , I pinky-promise you’ll have fun either way.”

 

“That’s not what I —” Keith starts, frowning, then pauses, apparently searching his soul for whatever thing he’s earned enough makeout-cred to ask for. Blowjob or handjob, Lance thinks, it’s really not that hard; maybe Keith wants to do anal, Lance could be down for that — heh, Lance thinks, _face_ -down — but even anal doesn’t take this long to ask for, maybe it’s some freaky sex thing, Keith _is_ full of surprises...

 

“Is it going to be some freaky sex thing?” Lance blurts out.

 

“...Is that what you want?” Keith asks.

 

“No?” Lance tries. “Yes? I don’t know, life’s a rich tapestry, but I wasn’t planning on getting kinky tonight, so unless you actually know what you’re doing… no?”

 

“I _definitely_ don’t know what I’m doing,” Keith mutters.

 

“I’m confused,” Lance admits. “What are you trying to ask for? You can just say it, I swear I’m not gonna judge you and I’ll probably do it.”

 

And fuck, he really is confused, and whatever’s gotta be coming next has got to be something weird, because otherwise he has no clue why things aren’t going down the way they’re supposed to. Lance has a strategy, okay: he’s never actually slept with another trans person, there weren’t a lot of queer girls in Varadero and he hasn’t slept with a girl since he transitioned — though not for lack of trying — but cis guys are _easy_ , they were before and they were after if he was willing to limbo down his standards a little, so his usual modus operandi is just fuck or suck and then get himself off. But Keith has been guarding his dick like it’s gold in Gringotts, and doesn’t like to be touched except apparently he does, and now he’s looking increasingly determined, with that same expression he gets before he John McClanes it off some twelve-story building as the whole thing bursts into flames behind him.

 

“Do you want me to try…” Keith says, awkwardly trailing off. “Uh, I don’t know what you want me to call… Using my mouth? You know? _On_ you?”

 

“Wait, what?” Lance blurts out.

 

“Oral?” Keith tries.

 

“Yeah, thanks, I got that, as clear as you were not,” Lance says. “But — really? I thought you didn’t want to deal with my… um, you know, bits.”

 

Keith stares at him strangely. “Why?”

 

“Why you don’t want to deal with my bits?” Lance asks. “You’re really gonna make me spell it out? _Really_ , dude?”

 

“No, why did you think that?” Keith asks.

 

“Because you haven’t tried to touch me there at all and you’ve been making room for Jesus the entire time we’ve been making out?” Lance says. “Also, you know, the part where you dumped me off your dick like I had the clap?”

 

“I thought _you_ didn’t want me to touch you there,” Keith says. “Every time I asked what you wanted me to do, you kept going after my bits instead!”

 

“Well, yeah, but _with_ my bits,” Lance says. “At least the first time.”

 

“I told you, it sounded like you were hurting,” Keith says. “I don’t get off on that either.”

 

“And it can be a no if you want,” Keith adds hurriedly. “If there’s something else that’s easier for you, that’s okay — I mean, you said that you forgot your stuff, so… Maybe this? I can try this.”

 

“And you… want to?” Lance asks.

 

“I do,” Keith says, firmly. “I like focusing on the other guy. And I want to get you off.”

 

“...Oh,” Lance says, and this is still a bad idea, but the way Keith had said that, like it was just _obvious…_ “Uh, okay. Yes. We can try this.”

 

“Right,” Keith says, looking so grimly determined that Lance nearly bursts out laughing, but Lance manages to keep a lid on it, because something tells him that nervous laughter probably isn’t a great thing to hit Keith with in bed. “How do we…?”

 

“Missionary works,” Lance says, even though missionary kind of sucks as far as sustained oral sex goes, and Lance’s personal favorite back when he still did this was being on the edge of the bed with his partner kneeling — or with him sitting on their face, that had been _really_ fun the few times he’d tried it — but missionary also gives Keith the best escape route if (when) he needs to tap out, so missionary it is.

 

It takes some awkward repositioning, with Lance trying unsuccessfully to kick away Keith’s ten thousand heavy winter blankets while propping himself up with Keith’s single sad little pillow — “Why do you have an aversion to pillows,” Lance mutters; “Why would you ever need more than one?” Keith demands — and Keith banging his elbow on the wall in the process of getting down onto his stomach, but eventually they end up more or less in the right places, Keith settled down between Lance’s splayed legs, propped up on his elbows and staring at Lance’s bits with equal parts determination and dismay.

 

“You can, uh, you know, whenever,” Lance says, waving a hand vaguely.

 

Keith nods, and Lance closes his eyes and tries not to think too hard about what Keith is about to do, which is the moment that his brain decides to remind him that he’s not hooking up with some random guy, he’s hooking up with his teammate, his _gay_ teammate, so if it goes bad it goes _bad_...

 

Lance isn’t really paying attention right now, so he jumps a little bit when he feels the first tentative press of Keith’s mouth to him — but Keith doesn't shriek or swoon or pull back at all, really, just starts up little licks that are vaguely nice but not really enough to get Lance going, so Lance dares to open one of his eyes and look down, and then the other eye, because… well, that’s a pretty nice image, and Lance also doesn’t have to see the expression that Keith is probably making right now, which is also nice, if in a completely different way.

 

Lance does try to relax, he really does. This feels kind of good, even though Keith clearly has no idea what he’s doing, and maybe Lance should help him out with that, properly eating someone out is _hard_ , but then Lance thinks that maybe that’s not what Keith would want him to call it, maybe Lance is supposed to be thinking of what Keith’s doing as a blowjob, but that word just makes him squirm and not in a good way, and fuck, he hadn’t even thought of what words he was going to use for his body, he hadn’t ever needed to say them out loud before, and now he’s definitely more panicked than aroused, because at some point Keith might ask him and Lance is going to say the wrong thing and Keith is going to remember who he’s actually in bed with and freak out and leave and he’s a _friend_ —

 

“Is this not working for you?” Keith asks. “You’re not getting… Um. You’re not responding?”

 

“No, it is,” Lance says unconvincingly. “You’re doing pretty well for your first time. It is your first time, right?”

 

“Not my first time having sex,” Keith says. “But first time doing this… Yeah. I guess it’s pretty obvious, I’m not very good at it. Sorry,” and he’s starting to pull back into that turtle shell of his, his posture going angry and defensive and hard, like what, Lance was going to get mad at him for not being able to read Lance’s damn mind?

 

“No, don’t be sorry, it’s cool,” Lance says hastily. “Oral is hard, it took me a long time to figure out what the hell I was doing, everyone’s first try sucks,” and then wants to bang his head against the wall in mortification, because Keith pulls back even further at that, scooting away to sit back on his heels and stare down at Lance in frustration.

 

“We can do something else,” Keith offers. “You can top me, I know how to do that, I’m _good_ at that. And I… kinda thought you were going to. You can go get your stuff, I’ll wait.”

 

“My stuff?” Lance echoes, confused.

 

“You know, your… stuff,” Keith says, unhelpfully, and Lance is about ready to throttle the guy in frustration before Keith makes a much more helpful and also rather graphic gesture, which…

 

“Wait, are you talking about a strap-on?” Lance asks.

 

“That’s what you call yours?” Keith asks. “Yeah. That.”

 

“ _That’s_ what you kept asking me about in the corridor?” Lance asks, because if it is then that is… pretty fucking hilarious in retrospect. No wonder Keith had been trying to peer into all of Lance’s jacket pockets.

 

“Yeah,” Keith says. “You can go get it. Like I said, I’ll wait.”

 

“You’re gonna be waiting for a while, then, because I don’t own one,” Lance says. “Didn’t exactly have a chance to stock up on sex toys before I left Earth, and I’m not explaining to Shiro why I need petty cash to go shopping somewhere out here.”

 

“Oh,” Keith says, and the poor guy looks like Wiley E. Coyote the minute he realizes that he’s just gone through a paper backdrop and over a cliff, which is just baffling, because if getting fucked was what Keith was really looking for, Lance is the last place that it makes sense to go looking for it.

 

Except Keith apparently thinks that all trans guys just automatically have dicks laying around, because all guys have dicks, that’s what guys bring to bed, so. Maybe not that baffling after all.

 

“Sorry to disappoint,” Lance tells him. “I can fingerbang you, though. That kind of feels the same.”

 

“Yeah, sure, if that’s what you want,” Keith says, but rather than sounding excited that his dreams for tonight are sort of going to come true after all, he sounds about as enthused as Lance would be at folding laundry, which is just rude.

 

“Look, I promise, I’m good at this, you won’t even notice the difference,” Lance assures him.

 

“I know what it feels like, I’ve done this before,” Keith says. “Uh, lube’s in the top drawer over there, next to the socks, if you want gloves I’ve got a first aid kit somewhere. How do you want me?”

 

“I don’t know, how do you want to do this?” Lance asks.

 

“I don’t know, how do _you_ want to do this?” Keith asks, and Lance is back to being ready to throttle the guy, why can’t Keith just make up his damn mind about something other than the fact that he apparently wants to get fucked?

 

“Does it _matter_?” Lance snaps. “Look, am I doing this or not? Make up your mind!”

 

“Yes, Lance, I already said yes, you can fingerbang me,” Keith says, but now instead of flat and annoyed, he just sounds _pissed_. “Just stop fucking with me and tell me where you want me to be!”

 

“Why the fuck are you getting mad?” Lance demands. “I know I’m not what you’re used to, I’m _sorry_ if you’re disappointed, but _you_ were the one who asked me to have sex with you!”

 

“I offered because I wanted to, but I don’t know what you want me to do, I can’t read your mind!” Keith nearly shouts. “I’m sorry, but I _can’t_! I don’t care what you want, but you have to tell me! I can’t read your mind!”

 

“You don’t care what I want,” Lance repeats flatly.

 

And he’s fucked some seriously shitty people in his time, he’s slept with plenty of people who said that with their bodies or their tone or the things they _didn’t_ say, but he’s never heard it said that plainly before. He hadn’t expected Keith to be one of those people, but more fool him. Apparently the guy’s just _full_ of surprises.

 

“I don’t care,” Keith says. “I don’t care what you want us to do, I’ll do it, you can do whatever you need to and I’ll try my best, but I don’t know what you want and you won’t tell me and you don’t have stuff and I can’t read your mind, you have to _tell_ me how you want to do this.”

 

“Why do you not care what we do?” Lance asks.

 

“I want to have sex with you,” Keith says. “I’m _trying_ to have sex with you. So do you want to fingerbang me or not?”

 

“Do you want me to?” Lance asks.

 

“If it’s what you want, I told you, I’ll do it,” Keith says. “I want to have sex with you.”

 

“Yeah, but do you want me to do _this_? Specifically?” Lance presses.

 

“I already said I would, why do you keep _asking_?” Keith says.

 

“Okay, but that’s not actually what I asked,” Lance says, frustrated. “I didn’t ask if you would, I asked if you wanted me to.”

 

“Well, this is what you said you wanted and I clearly don’t know how to do anything else for you, so yes, I do want you to,” Keith snaps. “So go ahead and just do it and stop fucking with me!”

 

“Oh my God, I don’t want a yes on something that you don’t _actually_ want to do, how much of an asshole do you think I am?” Lance asks angrily. “I don’t want a yes that’s a no!”

 

“Then what _do_ you want?” Keith shouts, exasperated.

 

“I don’t know, what do you want?” Lance asks, a little desperate.

 

“I don’t _know_ ,” Keith insists. “I want what you want, so what the fuck do you want?”

 

“I want to have sex with you,” Lance tries. Keith rolls his eyes.

 

“I want to have sex with you, too,” Keith says, “we both want to have sex, great! How?!”

 

“What do you like?” Lance asks.

 

“What do _you_ like?” Keith retorts.

 

“Okay, fine, what do you not like?” Lance asks.

 

“I don’t know, what do _you_ not like?” Keith asks.

 

“You don’t know what you don’t like?” Lance demands.

 

“No, I don’t,” Keith snaps. “Seriously, Lance, quit fucking around. What do you want?”

 

“Stop asking me what I want and answer the question!” Lance retorts.

 

“You won’t answer my question either!” Keith says. “It’s not about me, quit asking me about me!”

 

“What do you mean, it’s not about you?” Lance asks. “We’re having sex!”

 

“Well, we _would_ be if you would just tell me what you want me to do,” Keith says, scowling.

 

“Fine, itemized list. Number one, gold standard: did you like fucking me in the, you know?” Lance asks, waving his hands wildly towards his general downstairs area and hoping he’s not going to actually have to spell it out.

 

“No,” Keith says. “It sounded like you didn’t like it, it sounded like you were hurting, so no. I didn’t.”

 

“Why do you talking about if I liked it or not?” Lance asks. “I’m not asking you about what I liked, forget me, I’m asking you about you.”

 

“Of course I’m talking about if you liked it,” Keith says. “Why the fuck would I have asked you if you wanted to have sex with me if I didn’t care what you liked? That’s the whole point!”

 

“Oh my God, that’s not the whole point, the whole point is you and your dick!” Lance shouts.

 

“No, _you’re_ the point!” Keith shouts back. “You and _your_ dick! Or your — whatever!”

 

“You literally just said you didn’t like fucking me, why are you still talking about my whatever?” Lance demands.

 

“Or maybe not your whatever, I don’t know,” Keith says, frustrated. “What’s the part of you that makes you feel good? What do you call it?”

 

“Why do you need to know?” Lance asks.

 

“Because I want to make you feel good,” Keith says, with a heavily implied _duh_ . “But you won’t tell me _how_.”

 

“Well, I’m trying to make you feel good, and you won’t tell me how either!” Lance says.

 

“You first,” Keith retorts.

 

“No, you first,” Lance says.

 

“No, _you_ —” Keith starts.

 

“Fine, we’ll both be first, happy?” Lance interrupts. “I’ll ask, we can answer at the same time, the answer can’t be ‘whatever you want’ or silence.”

 

“...Okay,” Keith says. “We can try that.”

 

“Itemized list,” Lance says. “You fucking me in the… whatever. 1, 2, 3—”

 

“No,” Keith says. “I don’t care, if you liked it then it’d be a yes, but you sounded like you were hurting. No.”

 

“...No,” Lance says, closer to on 4 than 3. “Um. Me fingerbanging you. 1, 2, 3—”

 

“No preference,” Lance says.

 

“No,” Keith says, grudgingly, then: “Wait, really? You asked.”

 

“Yeah, because I thought you wanted it,” Lance says. “You looked disappointed when I said I didn’t have stuff.”

 

“I was going to do it because _you_ wanted it,” Keith says.

 

“Well, 1) I didn’t, and 2) it doesn’t matter if I did, because you apparently didn’t either, and I don’t want you to do things because I want them,” Lance says, and then quickly clarifies when Keith opens his mouth to argue more: “I don’t want you to do things that you wouldn’t have fun doing just because I want them.”

 

“I don’t want you to do things like that either,” Keith says. “I want you to do things because you like them. I want you to have fun. That’s the whole point.”

 

“You’re the whole point too, dumbass,” Lance says.

 

Keith scowls. “Yeah, but if my point gets in the way of your point —”

 

“Okay, fine, we’re _both_ the whole points, I’m a whole point too,” Lance says irritably. “We can be points together, united in pointiness, and if our points get in the way we can, I dunno, move them around until they fit. And if you don’t want to be a point, I’m gonna go play more Mario Kart instead.”

 

“I’m lost,” Keith admits. “What’re the points?”

 

“The point is that what you want matters,” Lance says. “Independently of what I want.”

 

“Fine, then if I have to be a point, you have to be a point, and what you want matters too,” Keith says. “Independently. And if you don’t want to be a point, _I’m_ going to go play Mario Kart instead. Do you want to?”

 

“Play Mario Kart?” Lance asks.

 

“Be a point,” Keith says.

 

“I don’t… really know how to be a point,” Lance says after a moment.

 

“Me neither,” Keith says. “And not just because I’m still confused by this metaphor. But… we can try?”

 

“...Okay,” Lance says. “Yeah. We can try. Point accountability.”

 

“Sex buddy system,” Keith suggests.

 

“That’s a really weird image and I’m immediately scraping it from my brain,” Lance informs him. “Okay: Did you like anything we’ve done? Or, uh, tried to do? Liked it physically, not liked it because you thought the other person liked it. On the count of three. 1, 2, 3—”

 

“I liked making out with you,” Keith says.

 

“I liked making out,” Lance says. “A lot. Except for the nipple thing.”

 

“And I liked — um,” Keith adds. “Using my mouth on you? What do you call it?”

 

“Going down on me?” Lance offers, and immediately thinks, _fuck, blowing me, not going down on me_ , or maybe he should have said oral, keep it safe and neutral, or maybe he just shouldn’t have said anything at all —

 

“Yeah, I liked going down on you. But I’m not good at it,” Keith says. “ _You_ didn’t like it. Physically. I know enough to tell that much.”

 

“I did,” Lance protests, then when Keith glares at him, Lance amends that, “Okay, I wasn’t getting a _whole_ lot out of it at the time physically, but it still felt kinda good and it’s usually harder with my setup, there’s a lot of trial and error, you just have to keep practicing and pay attention to how the person feels and try things until you find what works. Nobody’s gonna to be good at it right away.”

 

“Maybe most people can do that, but I can’t just magically _tell_ things about you, okay?” Keith says, frustrated. “I told you, I can’t read minds, not with you or anyone. I try, I try all the time, but I _can’t_. I’m never going to be good at things where I have to know how people are feeling. That’s not how I have sex.”

 

“You just spent ten minutes yelling at me about how much you care about what your partner feels like during sex,” Lance reminds him. “And now you’re telling me that you don’t? I’m seriously confused.”

 

“I didn’t say I didn’t care, I said that’s not how I do it,” Keith huffs. “I usually just bottom. It’s easier for me. Or some kinds of blowjobs. If the guy’s fucking me, you know, either end, he can just do whatever he needs to get off, he doesn’t have to try to be specific and I don’t have to read his mind. Everyone wins.”

 

“And you like that?” Lance asks. “Actually, you know what, wrong question. Do you like how that feels? Physically?”

 

Keith shrugs. “Sometimes.”

 

“But your usual isn’t working with me,” Lance says, with a sense of dawning realization. “Because I can’t just, I dunno, stick it in.”

 

“Yeah,” Keith says, awkwardly.

 

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, my usual isn’t working too great with you either,” Lance says. “Seeing as I’m generally the one getting stuck.”

 

“...Oh,” Keith says. “Yeah, that’s… not what I expected.”

 

“So what _were_ you expecting?” Lance asks, confused. “Other than that I owned a strap-on? Which, by the way, not all trans guys do, so not great job on the assuming.”

 

“Yeah, starting to get that,” Keith snaps. “And I don’t _know_ , I had a plan but it’s not working,” and he still sounds angry, but Lance is starting to think that maybe Lance isn’t the one that Keith’s angry at. “Just _suck_ at it, I guess.”

 

“Heh,” Lance says reflexively, then explains when Keith just looks confused: “Cause you were. For, like, ten seconds. But those were some good ten seconds.”

 

“I’d try that again. I _want_ to try that again, I liked that. Independently. Is there a way that you could just… do whatever you need to?” Keith asks hopefully. “If you want to try again, too?”

 

“Not any way I feel comfortable doing,” Lance says, because there probably was, but the idea of Keith just passively letting Lance do what he wanted to him because it was _easier_ , even if Keith was technically consenting to it, even if Keith was offering it, even if Keith said that he wanted it, just feels wrong in a way that makes Lance want to steal Shiro’s steel-toed boots so Lance can travel back to Earth and kick whatever guy had first said yes to that offer right in the balls. “But I could…”

 

Lance frantically casts around for a single damn thing that's worked tonight, and there’s really only been one — _you have to tell me, I can’t read your mind —_ and nobody sleeps with Lance to hear him talk but he’d said no, not there, and Keith had listened, so: “...Maybe try talking you through it?”

 

“You are good at talking,” Keith says.

 

“I am a _masterful_ talker,” Lance says grandly, even though he’s never talked someone all the way through sex before and definitely not through the whole trans linguistic minefield and fuck, Lance really is the king of bad ideas, _gay teammate_ , _friend,_ but then he remembers that his remaining options are:

 

  1. dupe Keith by faking his way through an entire sexual encounter
  2. leave
  3. pressure Keith into doing one of the things Keith has said or implied that he doesn’t want to do, which might be frighteningly easy and is also not actually an option at all



 

so option 4) be terrified and fumble his way through talking about his body and his desires and pray that Keith won’t freak out or give up is looking pretty good by comparison.

 

“So how do we… Missionary again?” Keith asks, awkwardly.

 

“Missionary kind of sucks,” Lance admits. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it works for some people, it _really_ works for some people, I knew this one girl — but, uh, anyway, it doesn’t work super duper well for me.”

 

“Okay, so what works?” Keith asks. “What do you usually do?”

 

 _Not much, lately_ , Lance wants to joke, but the last thing Keith probably wants to hear is that Lance doesn’t know what he’s doing either, even if right now it’s kind of true, so Lance quickly mentally shuffles through his list of faves for getting oral. It’s a pretty short list, and #1: facesitting is definitely out, so Lance tentatively goes with #2 and says, “It’s kind of like missionary, but I’m on the edge of the bed and you’re kneeling? But if that’s too hard on your knees, that’s fine, we can figure something else out —”

 

Keith snorts. “I’ve spent plenty of time on my knees. I’m not worried.”

 

Well, at least one of us isn’t, Lance thinks, faintly, but he’s not going to let the hotness of that image distract him from the mission at hand, Keith on his knees sucking some guy’s — okay, so Lance is a little distracted, but he’ll rally, he’s rallying, and before he freaks out and rallies himself right out the door, he tosses Keith the sad little pillow and explains, “More comfortable than the floor.”

 

“Oh, thanks,” Keith says, and climbs off the bed to drop the sad little pillow on the floor and then himself right down after it. “You’re right, this is a good height.”

 

“Good thing you don’t have underbed storage,” Lance blurts out.

 

“I don’t really have that much to store,” Keith says. “Are you gonna get over here?”

 

“Uh, yeah, yes, sure,” Lance says, and gets over there, scooting down so he can sit on the edge of the bed in front of Keith, albeit with his body still thrumming with anxiety and his legs closed tightly enough that you couldn’t fit a dime between them.

 

It’s not a bad view. If you take Lance out of the picture, it’s a pretty fucking good one. Lance isn’t gonna lie, he was distracted by the thought of Keith like this earlier and he’s really distracted now, because Keith like this _promises things,_ and for the first time tonight, Keith looks like he might actually believe that he can deliver on them.

 

“You look really good down there,” Lance says, and then immediately wants to kick himself in the face, but Keith just smirks and said, “Yeah, I’ve been told that.”

 

“Smug isn’t a good look on anyone, and it’s not a good look on you,” Lance informs him.

 

Keith grins. “But you just said it was.”

 

Oddly enough, Keith seems a lot more comfortable now than he had been when he was practically on top of Lance. Maybe the guy’s just feeling a little homier down there. It’s kind of a blowjob position, maybe it’ll be familiar enough to be okay, even though what Keith’s going to be doing isn’t a blowjob, at least not for Lance. For some trans guys it would be, maybe it’s supposed to be for Lance too, but it’s not, and anyway, Lance has never been one of those guys who could just be ready to go when the starting gun goes off — his body is difficult and picky and he needs _time_ , he can’t just stick it in, and he’s not sure that he’d want to even if he _could_. He doesn’t really want to be that kind of person.

 

“So are you gonna…?” Keith asks, gesturing vaguely.

 

“Gonna?” Lance echoes, confused.

 

“I can’t really _do_ anything if you’re…” Keith trails off, staring at Lance’s knees like they’re holding the secrets to the universe, and then Lance realizes that yeah, it’s pretty hard to give head to someone who’s got his thighs pressed together like his abuela in church, oh God, why was that the image that his brain came up with, and Lance’s horror at spending any more time with that comparison outweighs the terror of actually kicking this whole not-a-blowjob process off, so Lance spreads his legs and doesn’t close his eyes and nearly jumps out his skin when Keith runs a hand up the back of Lance’s calf, but the smile that Keith gives him is worth the fact that Keith scared the bejeezus out of him, because there’s a little less advanced trigonometry in Keith’s expression now and a lot more fighter pilot.

 

This, of course, is when Lance realizes that they’ve picked a much better position but a pretty sucky angle to do it at — or, like, not a suck-y angle at all — and Lance says, “Wait, no, hold on, not like this,” and the fighter pilot disappears into something that for a second looks a little like fear, so Lance quickly explains, “I’m just not at a great angle, I need to be kinda, uh, less right angle and more scalene,” which definitely brings back the advanced trigonometry, so Lance clarifies, “It’d be easier— _better_ if I was laying back more.”

 

“...Do you want the pillow back?” Keith offers.

 

“That pillow does fuck all to recline on,” Lance informs him. “That’s the saddest, flattest pillow I’ve ever seen. Why do you not have more?”

 

“Why do you have so many?” Keith demands.

 

“Because I like them?” Lance says. “Because they’re decorative and comfortable and really tie a room together?”

 

“Yeah, well, we should have gone to your room,” Keith says. “Or just grabbed some pillows, I guess, I don’t really want to have sex with a dead bug in the ceiling.”

 

“I lied about the bug,” Lance admits. “There’s no bug. I just didn’t want to wash the sheets afterwards.”

 

“That’s what wall sex is for,” Keith says. “Or a table, but I don’t have one of those. That’s why I offered.”

 

“That is _not_ what wall sex is for, wall sex is for fun and spontaneous and sometimes probably a little too public,” Lance says, “and anyway that wasn’t gonna happen for a lot of reasons,” because Lance doesn’t own ‘stuff’ and fingerbanging up against a wall either requires Cirque du Soleil or accidentally breaking a wrist and also, _Sometimes_ . Also, _No._

 

“Do you want me to go back to your room and get pillows?” Keith asks.

 

“Not really,” Lance says, because a little part of him is still saying that if Keith walks out of this room right now he’s never going to come back, even though a bigger, smarter part of him knows that Keith will come back because it’s his own damn room and Keith’s an insomniac but the dude has to sleep _eventually._ “Um…”

 

Lance could lay back and think of England — Cuba? — but the idea of not being able to see what’s happening at all freaks him out, even though it’s Keith and Lance is starting to realize that Keith won’t pull anything weird on him, and they’ve already done the panic+oral=profit??? route, so that’s out. Position #1 is automatically out, and positions #3-6 are out because of aforementioned line of sight, and Lance had tried #7 once but it needed way more furniture and also more flexibility than he was bringing to the table, literally.

 

Maybe holding himself up on his elbows could work? Lance isn’t averse to ab workouts — he’s been doing more sit-ups lately because just living with Shiro will give a guy an inferiority complex — but he hasn’t been doing a _lot_ more sit-ups, and if Keith’s willing to keep it up for more than five minutes, Lance is gonna run into problems, because he can either focus on shaking muscle pain from his admittedly still-not-very-great abs or he can focus on his downstairs area. So… maybe not.

 

It’s looking like missionary or do something else — although what that something else would be, Lance has no idea, the only thing they haven’t tried or offered is mutual masturbation or manual for Lance and both of those are actually scarier for him than oral; Keith might let Lance give him a blowjob, Lance is super at home with those, but _let_ , so no — and after everything Lance still doesn’t want to leave, so Lance is either going to get those abs working or lay back and frantically remind himself that Keith is a good guy, Keith is a _friend_ , and then he spots the pile of heavy blankets he’d shoved off the bed earlier and has an idea.

 

“Hey, can you toss me one of those blankets?” Lance asks, which Keith tries to do, but the thing’s so heavy that it just flops awkwardly onto Lance’s knees and then Lance has to figure out how to get out from underneath it, Jesus, this thing weighs a _ton_ , and Keith has, like, nine.

 

“This is a lot of winter blankets. Do you really get that cold?” Lance asks. “You’ve gotten checked for hypothyroidism, right?”

 

“I don’t get cold, I just don’t like sleeping without anything on top of me,” Keith explains. “They actually get kind of hot, but…” He shrugs, then suddenly looks suspicious. “Why do you want one?”

 

“Relax, I’m not gonna make you do laundry,” Lance says. “But if I kind of squish-roll it up… Ta-da!” he announces, presenting the large and rather lumpy improvised pillow to Keith. “A backrest. Or actually, a fifth of a backrest. Hand me some more.”

 

Keith does, and Lance piles them up and sort of wiggles down into them and actually, this is surprisingly comfortable, maybe he should see about getting some of these blankets for himself, and then Keith goes back to his own sad little pillow and looks up at Lance expectantly and oh, right. They’re actually doing this.

 

And it’s not… a bad thought, exactly, not nearly as much as it would have been last year or yesterday or even during the last crack they had at this, back when it was the world’s most panicky blowjob and Keith had apparently still thought that Lance was going to whip out his own silicone dick any minute now and fuck Keith into the mattress and/or wall because Keith doesn’t consider ‘fuck’ to be a directional verb — and oh my God, Lance belatedly realizes, _would you fuck Coran too_ , had Keith thought that Lance was asking him for a threesome? They are gonna have _words_ about that and also why Keith had said that he could, right after Lance can obtain some bleach to apply to his brain afterwards — but it’s still an idea that makes Lance tremble a little, and not in the good way. Even Keith’s hotness, distracting as it is, isn’t distracting enough to drown out that.

 

But Keith’s a good guy, Keith’s a _friend_ , and it’s not a bad thought, exactly. And the thing is, Lance likes a lot of sex things, but he _really_ likes getting head. It turns his crank, it revs his engine, it _gets him going_ , and back when he was still calling himself a girl and having sex with people who thought he was one, it was such a treat when he ended up with partners who’d do it, and even better when he ended up with partners who were good at it, and he’d had a roll in the hay with enough of those people that he knew exactly what he liked and what he didn’t. He wanted things, and he didn’t always get them, but at least he knew how to ask.

 

And then he’d dared to speak out loud something that’d only been a whisper in the back of his mind before, a creeping sense of not-right every time he heard _niña, hija, nieta, chica, mamacita, baby girl, beautiful, gorgeous_ , his own fucking name — and things had changed. He’d changed. And he doesn’t regret transitioning, not for a single goddamn second, not socially or hormonally or surgically, when the bandages had finally come off after his top surgery he’d fucking _bawled_ — but he’s always been difficult for people to handle, and he’s only gotten moreso.

 

The truth is, Lance doesn’t know how to want things anymore. He’s not even sure if he’s allowed to try. It had seemed like such a small price to pay for everything he got, but even small things can cut you if they rub long enough. Even small things can hurt.

 

And now there’s Keith, who’s cisgender and gay but also doesn’t really seem to know how to want things for himself either, on his knees with his face about six inches away from a part of Lance’s body that’s a shape that he’s _definitely_ not supposed to want, looking up at Lance not with curiosity or disgust but scowling impatience.

 

“Are you waiting for something?” Keith demands. “You’ve been staring at the top of my head for the last minute and a half.”

 

“...Nope,” Lance asks. “Not waiting at all. Is there anything you don’t want me to do?”

 

Keith considers this for a moment, then says, “Don’t pull my hair,” and goes in to get busy, but then pops right back up to add, “And don’t pull on my ears either, they’re not handles.”

 

“But they’re so big now!” Lance protests, and getting glared at by someone who looks like a Galra while in a rather vulnerable position shouldn’t turn his crank this much either but, uh, wow, it does, so that’s a new thing about his psychology, or maybe just a thing about Keith. Either way, Lance has a terrible premonition that he’s going to be flashing back to this moment the next time he battles their evil imperialist overlords.

 

“If the next Galra I get into a fight with shoots me because I was too distracted by thinking about sex, it’s completely your fault,” Lance tells Keith. “Curse you and your sexy ways.”

 

Without even looking up, Keith gives him the finger, and Lance can’t help it, he laughs, which is when Keith goes in for the first lick. He’s as tentative as before, almost reluctant to make contact, which despite Keith’s assurances that this was a yes is still a little nerve-wracking until Lance realizes that Keith’s tentativeness might not be distaste as much as nervousness, unsure of what he was allowed to do for a guy whose body could have as many tripwires as as it did pleasures — and Keith has been so careful about words tonight, fumbling in a way that was driving Lance bug-eyed with frustration earlier but is now kind of sweet in retrospect, how patiently he was waiting for Lance to give him the right ones. Maybe Keith would actually be okay with hearing them.

 

“So, you have to be a little… firmer than that,” Lance starts. “What you’re doing feels nice but it’s not really enough, and I’m okay if you touch my bits, that’s kind of the whole point right now, so you can, uh, get up in there,” and then winces at his own phrasing, but Keith moves a little closer, tongue working a little harder.

 

“A _little_ harder than that,” Lance says, and Keith does, tongue flicking upwards, and Lance yelps, “Not that hard!”

 

Keith makes an annoyed sound.

 

“Hey, mine isn’t like yours, you can’t just _go_ for it,” Lance says. “There’s build-up. It’s a process. It’s a journey. And also, like, eight thousand nerve endings in one square inch.”

 

Keith makes a noise that’s a closer to horrified, and pulls back to demand, “How do you handle having _anything_ touching it? _Ever_?”

 

“Patience, trust, and pixie dust,” Lance quips, but Keith makes another annoyed sound, so Lance says, “Okay, fine, variation, communication, escalation, and time. I can’t… I kinda take a while to get there.”

 

“Do you usually get there?” Keith asks.

 

“When someone’s eating me out… yeah,” Lance dares to say.

 

Keith grins. “Then okay,” he says, and then hurriedly adds, “But even if you don’t get there, it’s still a yes, it’s still fun, I want to make you feel good. Independently want.”

 

“Wow,” Lance says. “Keith Kogane: rude asshole in the streets, gentleman in the sheets.”

 

“Lance McKlane: annoying loudmouth everywhere,” Keith retorts.

 

“Okay, fine, you’re still kind of a rude asshole in the sheets,” Lance says. “Gotta preserve your reputation, I guess,” but his brain just keeps replaying Keith’s words on an endless, whispering loop — _I want to make you feel good, independently want_ — so Lance hesitantly offers, “If you wanna keep going — for me, it works better to start with kinda general pressure and then specific targeted stimulation. So, like, broad flat tongue on my, you know, kinda like you’re,” he tries to think back to how one of the girls he’d slept with described it, “...licking an ice cream cone?”

 

Keith snorts, but does as instructed, which feels really nice, and it occurs to Lance that positive reinforcement is a thing, so Lance tells him so, and then adds, “You can touch me while you’re doing it. With your hands. But not on or, uh, _in_ my bits, I’m sorry, that’s just too weird, but thighs, thighs are good,” because Keith had wanted Lance to talk, so hopefully Keith will accept nervous babbling instead.

 

Apparently Keith will, because he reaches up to touch Lance, running both hands in slow, sure circles on Lance’s inner thighs, and Lance barely manages to bite back a really undignified squeak, because Keith probably didn’t mean to do this but it’s having the unintended effect of pushing Lance’s legs further apart, which is simultaneously nerve-wracking and really fucking hot.

 

That’s a pretty popular combo tonight, Lance thinks, and then Keith pushes Lance’s legs a little farther apart at the same time as Keith licks upwards in one particularly long, firm stripe — and yep, Lance thinks, yep yep yep yep, _awesome_ combo, and doesn’t realize he’s saying that out loud until Keith makes a little pleased noise and does it again.

 

My God, Lance thinks, stunned. This might actually work.

 

“Okay, what you’re doing is great, super great — oh, _wow_ , do that again — but when you’re ready, it’s not just up-and-down, you can kinda…” and Lance valiantly tries to think of words that aren’t _shake it all around_ , “experiment with different moves in different directions, variety is fun, figure-8s are good, some people say tracing out the ABCs works but I’ve always found it really hard to spell and have sex at the same time? Uh, don’t go for direct stimulation right now, it’s kinda too sensitive, but you can do circles _around_ my, you know, but nothing _in_ my, you know —”

 

“No, I don’t know your ‘you know’,” Keith mutters, frustrated. “How many ‘you know’s do you have?”

 

“Just don’t stick anything in me,” Lance snaps, and then, “Sorry, sorry, it’s just — words are hard.”

 

“Yeah,” Keith says. “Believe me, I do know that.”

 

“I guess just… ice cream cone and figure-8s? To start?” Lance offers.

 

“You know better than I do,” Keith says. “But sure, I’ll try that.”

 

“And — keep touching me,” Lance says. “With your hands. Please.”

 

Keith grins. “I’ll do that, too.”

 

He does, on both counts. The figure-8s are a wash because Lance is still a little too sensitive for them quite yet — his “ow, no” has Keith yanking back so fast he nearly gives himself whiplash — and apparently Keith is also bad at spelling during sex, actually stopping in frustration at one point because he gets lost in the middle of _cumulonimbus_ — “Why was that the word you chose?” Lance asks, baffled; “It has lots of curves, you said you liked circles,” Keith explains — but basic geometry is happily within Keith’s sex-abilities, a fact that Lance finds out when he tells Keith, “I don’t know, forget letters, just make shapes,” expecting Keith to just go back to painting the fencepost, but if that’s a fencepost, it’s a very weirdly shaped one.

 

“Wait, was that a… trapezoid?” Lance asks, squinting suspiciously down at Keith.

 

Keith just makes a little noise that could be a yes or no, which means that it definitely _was_ , but he seems to be having fun with it, and it’s basically ABCs without the words, lines and curves and indirect brushes against Lance’s, you know, that send up little sparks of pleasure every time, so… hilarious, but Lance is not actually complaining. At all.

 

“Hey, do a dodecahedron,” Lance says, just for his own amusement. But Keith a) actually knows what that is, and b) does it, so Lance hurriedly says, “Wow, okay, that’s some good geometry, do that again,” and apparently dodecahedrons really get Lance going, you learn something new every day.

 

Lance kind of expects Keith to give up after about ten minutes, fifteen, tops — it’s new, it’s weird, it’s difficult, it’s one hell of a tongue-and-jaw workout, and Keith has never shied away from workouts or difficult but he’s sure not a fan of new — and it’s not like Lance is checking the clock or anything, but they hit what feels like about ten minutes, then what’s definitely more than ten minutes, then a _lot_ more than ten minutes, and the only thing that Keith does is reposition himself more comfortably on his sad little pillow, settling in like he’s planning to be there a while, which is both very hot and maybe not true.

 

“We can take a break if you’re tired,” Lance tries. “Or, uh, do something else. If you want.”

 

Keith snorts. “I’ve kept going for _way_ longer than this,” he says, which is… an image. “And this is fun. I _like_ this. Independently.”

 

“Oh, yeah, okay,” Lance says, faintly. “Go ahead. Dodecahedron away.”

 

Keith goes back to his geometry, and that’s really super duper nice and might ensure that Lance will never be able to look at a star chart the same way — which is gonna make mission briefings awkward, or at least more entertaining — and eventually Lance says, “Hey, let’s try the figure-8s, I think I’m ready,” and the first time they try again he isn’t but the second time he is — and none of this is what he expected from tonight, a few hours ago Lance would have said getting transported back to Earth was more likely than Keith Kogane naked and on his knees, making happy little noises while he traced out dodecahedrons with his tongue on Lance’s— you know — and Lance is really enjoying Keith touching him, a warmer kind of comfort to the little lightning-bolts of pleasure that are starting to zing through Lance’s body straight from his— you know, and he wants to touch Keith back, and maybe Keith would want that too?

 

“I know I can’t pull your hair — or your ears, I know, not handles — but can I try touching you?” Lance says. “Not light touch and not to control you either, just… touch. Uh, thumbs up for yes, two fingers up for no?”

 

Keith gives a thumbs-up, so Lance reaches down to cup the back of Keith’s head, trying to be gentle but firm. At first, Keith tenses up, bracing himself like he’s worried Lance is going to ignore what he said and shove him forward, but he doesn’t send up his no either, and after a long moment he relaxes, and Lance relaxes too, cautiously enjoying the noises Keith’s making, the sight of Keith doing this for him, the sound and warmth and feel of Keith’s mouth on Lance’s c— you know, the list of no’s slowly being tried and cast aside to find the yes’s.

 

For a while, Lance lets himself just float on a pleasant sea of sensation and Keith’s persistence. Keith’s stubborn commitment to excellence has saved their bacon more times than Lance can count, but damn, Lance has never quite appreciated it as _thoroughly_ as he is right now. It’s been getting steadily better, too, and part of Lance wants to just flop back and starfish and let himself feel, but staying propped up like this, being able to see Keith, being able to reach out and touch him, hold onto him — that’s good. That’s especially good.

 

And it really isn’t about control. Lance doesn’t control Keith at all. Keith could get up and leave this very second, and it would feel shitty and Lance would probably need a lot of cuddles and gender validation from Hunk but Keith could still do it, because that’s his choice, that’s _always_ his choice, and Keith is weird and awkward and Lance is starting to suspect some things, so fuck anyone to hell who ever told Keith that he didn’t have choices other than the ones other people made for him, told him with their words or their body or just the silent, staring judgment that said that something about Keith was _wrong_ —

 

It’s not control. It’s connection. Keith’s definitely not shying away anymore — talk about _get up in there_ — and like this, with Keith’s hands on him and mouth on him and Lance’s hands on Keith in return, it’s not as scary as it had been before, when their single point of contact was one of the places on Lance’s body that Lance feels the most nervous about when it comes to other people.

 

It’s not that Lance isn’t comfortable as a sexual being. He is. He got the good Espinosa genes (and also the Espinosa predisposition to ADHD and hay fever, but whatever), high cheekbones and elegant hands and long legs and a _great_ ass, and Lance used to be pretty, although he’s not sure if he counts as handsome.

 

He likes sex. He likes being wanted. He usually gets off.

 

But the people he goes after are the kind who aren’t actually interested in doing the work to get him off, or even care if he gets off at all, if he feels good at all. He’s always been that way, he picks shitty people on purpose, that’s who Lance _is_ , he makes bad decisions — but it’s gotten so much worse since he transitioned, because he’s learned from a lifetime of painful experience that it’s better to be wanted as a place than as a person, especially now that the person that he is is obvious to anyone who gets into his pants to see.

 

A place isn’t vulnerable like that. A place doesn’t need to want, doesn’t need no’s or yes’s or maybe’s. A place can’t be afraid, and it’s so fucking terrifying, to offer yourself up to someone else and go, _here, take this, and please don’t hurt me with it._

 

Except tonight Lance seems to have bumbled his way into the bed of someone who’s used to being a place too, and two places can’t have sex, so for once they have to be people, and it’s not about control. There’s nothing keeping Keith here but the yes that’s freely given, the yes that means that Keith wants; the yes that means that Lance is wanted.

 

“Hey, so that thing you’re doing right now is really awesome,” Lance pants, “please keep doing that, A+, but I’m ready for that targeted stimulation now, I’m super duper ready, so you can start alternating what you’ve been doing with harder, uh, flicks on my— clit,” Lance finishes in a rush, and Keith hums in agreement and does exactly that, so Lance tells him, “That feels really good,” and then Keith hums in agreement again with his mouth _on_ Lance and his hands on Lance, and he’s still here, and a little part of Lance wants to cry but a much bigger part of him wants to moan, so he does, and Keith is apparently pretty damn into that, because he makes one of his much more deep-throated hums and his hands flex on Lance’s thighs, so Lance keeps going with the directions and the word that’s so much better than _you know_ , louder every time, and Keith keeps going with the sounds, and it turns into one hell of a great feedback loop.

 

Eventually, though, he starts noticing Keith tensing up again under his hands, and Keith is still intense and focused and it feels so damn good, and Keith hasn’t sent up a no — but Lance is also not a total shit, so he asks, “Hey, are you okay? You seem kind of… tense.”

 

He’s reluctantly ready for Keith to say that he’s bored and tired, that he’s not feeling the love and it’s really time for Lance to stop being greedy and reciprocate, but Keith pulls back and just looks shifty until he finally mutters, “My neck hurts, but that’s fine, it’s still a yes. Independently.”

 

“Um,” Lance says, because so what if he hasn’t gotten there, he’s already gotten so damn much, he knows what he’s supposed to say — _nah, it’s cool, let’s take care of you now_ — but that was a yes, so maybe... “There’s another position we could try? If you want to keep going? It’s easier for the person who’s… uh, you.”

 

“Oh, okay,” Keith says. “Sounds good. Can I have a minute to stretch out?”

 

 _No, not allowed, ha-ha_ , Lance is about to joke, and then realizes that Keith might actually think that Lance is being serious and therefore decide to grimly soldier on, so Lance hurriedly says, “Yeah, take as much time as you want,” and Keith nods and stands up from his sad little pillow, stretching upwards towards the ceiling in one sinuous move that makes Lance go all tingly in some already pretty damn tingly places.

 

“You’re really hot,” he blurts out, and Keith pauses, looking down in surprise.

 

“You are, too,” Keith says, and smiles at him. “I’m glad I’m having sex with you.”

 

Coming from anyone else, that’d be one hell of a bad line, but from Keith, it’s just… really nice, Lance thinks, and not just because he’s starting to realize that Keith actually means it.

 

“Me too,” Lance says.

 

“And now I’m ready to keep having sex,” Keith announces, finishing his stretch break with a businesslike roll of his shoulders. “What’s your position?”

 

“You lay on your back and I sort of… uh, straddle your face,” Lance explains, heart in his throat, and then hurries to add, “But not in a ‘I’m gonna suffocate you’ way, just in an ‘easy access with no neck and shoulder pain’ way,” because Lance knows from experience that it can be a pretty intimidating thought the first time — _let me come squash you with my cunt!_ — but Keith just nods and clambers up on the bed and lays back, looking unsurprised.

 

“I’ve done this before,” Keith explains. “Just —”

 

“Upside down and with a dick?” Lance supplies, dryly.

 

“Yeah,” Keith says.

 

“Well, fair warning coming from someone who’s done it both ways,” Lance says, clambering up to straddle Keith’s chest. “It’s gonna be a little more sensory intense with me. And, uh, let me know if you need to take a breather. Literally.”

 

Keith smiles, sly and promissory, and slides his hands up Lance’s inner thighs, which is just playing dirty pool. “Sounds good.”

 

Lance settles down gingerly at first, gives Keith time to adjust and/or decide that the not-a-blowjob had been okay but this is way too freaky and they need to do something else, but Keith just makes an annoyed noise and pulls him down further, arms wrapped around Lance’s thighs for leverage, and that stretch break must have done Keith a whole lotta good, because the new position means a lot more access and pressure, and if earlier was a sea then this is a fucking tsunami.

 

String board, Lance thinks wildly, string board, string board, Keith may not be great at gathering people-information but he sure is fucking fantastic at remembering and synthesizing it once he’s got it, and then Keith pushes Lance off him far enough to gasp out, “ _Talk_ ,” and then pulls Lance right back down.

 

So Lance does.

 

He talks, and begs, and babbles, and moans, and the words that come spilling out are things that Lance has barely dared to think in his own head, every single word he’s ever bitten back, words that weren’t supposed to be his anymore, even though they feel good for him and good for his body, they feel like names, they feel _right_ — and he is _so fucking angry_ that the world took those words from him, he realizes, so fucking angry that the world took his names and left him a place, even as he feels so damn amazing at the same time, his body zinging off pleasure in so many directions that he can barely think, can barely keep talking sense, but he can, he does, he _will_ , and absolutely no one can stop him —

 

— and his orgasm slams into him, and Lance howls and actually bangs his fist against the wall, and it’s possible that he hears a muffled thump like Shiro fell out of bed on the other side, but Lance can’t find a single fuck within him to give, because Keith actually moans and pulls Lance even closer in, forearms flexing and claws tiny zinging pinpricks of pain on Lance’s thighs, still going, and after a while Lance screams out a second one, and then hurriedly scrambles off Keith before it gets intense to the point of painful, landing in an ungraceful heap and nearly kneeing Keith in the head.

 

“That was awesome,” Keith gasps out.

 

“You fucking dork, you killed me with sex,” Lance wheezes, and Keith just laughs, his erection bobbing against his belly and looking way too fucking pleased with himself.

 

“Oh, just you wait,” Lance says, eyes narrowed, and shimmies himself back down flat on the bed to grab ahold of Keith’s dick, which shuts Keith up pretty fast, his self-satisfied giggling cut short with a surprised gasp.

 

“Yes?” Lance asks.

 

“Yes,” Keith says, and then Lance has to shift his grip so he doesn’t actually sprain something, and Keith swallows and says, “Not really. No.”

 

“Cool,” Lance says, and shifts his grip again. “Yes?”

 

Giggles gone, Keith’s reverted back to his usual expression, intense to the point of anger, only made worse with the new Galra look that still scares the bejeezus out of Shiro if Keith comes around the corner too fast, the unblinking laser stare that freaked Lance out for so many years — and now that Lance really looks, if he stops getting snagged on the stare and the bitch face and his own damn issues, Keith looks so fucking hopeful. He looks happy.

 

“No,” Keith says.

 

It takes Lance a little while to figure out the best rhythm and grip, guided by Keith’s many _no_ ’s and few _yes_ ’s and Lance’s own spirit of ingenuity, but he does, drawing out little moans and gasps and those deep-throated happy hums from Keith that make Lance breathe a little faster himself. Keith’s doing pretty well on his own but slicker is more fun, Keith did say he had lube around here somewhere, _lubrication is a thing, dickhead_ —

 

“Would slicker be fun?” Lance asks, and Keith nods, breathing hard —

 

— and then Lance has a thought, and he’s still flying high on his orgasm epiphany, so before he chickens out, he pulls a move out of his old playbook and swipes a hand through his own wetness and brings it back to Keith’s dick, and yep, Lance thinks, slicker is _way_ more fun.

 

“That help?” Lance asks. “That’s good?”

 

“Nnng,” Keith says.

 

“ _Ha_ ,” Lance says, smugly. “Put _that_ one on the tally board.”

 

Keith laughs and gasps out, “Sure,” before getting back to the business of feeling good, loudly and gratifyingly. Handjobs are great, Keith’s already panting and lifting his hips off the bed into Lance’s grip — but Lance’s body is whispering that he’s _not done_ , and he hadn’t wanted it earlier but he wants it so badly right now, and maybe Keith wouldn’t be into it but maybe he would, maybe this is something that Keith’s concept of _boy_ could truly welcome in, maybe Lance could have this and call it what it is for him and for once it wouldn’t mean anything other than the fact that he _likes_ it —

 

And Lance makes up his mind and stops long enough to ask Keith, “Hey, can you try fucking me again? P-in-V.”

 

“Will it hurt you again?” Keith asks.

 

Lance grins. “No.”

 

Keith grins back. “Then yes.”

 

So Lance surges up to swing his leg over and sinks right down onto Keith’s dick, his body welcoming Keith in with a sigh of pleasure instead of dull discomfort as he settles heavily onto Keith’s hips, and Lance’s thighs are going to hate him in the morning but he decides that they can hold him up for a little while longer anyway, because Keith is staring at him wide and shocked and also his hands are trembling a little bit on Lance’s hips where he’d reflexively reached out to hold on.

 

“This works for you?” Lance asks. “Does this feel good?”

 

“Yes _,_ ” Keith gasps out, strangled. “Definitely yes, yes, _yes…_ ”

 

“Good,” Lance breathes as he starts to move. “Because I want this, too.”

 

*

 

Afterwards, when both of them are too fucked-out, bone-tired, blissfully exhausted to keep going — after _yes_ and _no_ and _chest_ and _clit_ and _cunt_ and _yes_ and _no_ and _no_ , strange and wonderful music; after Keith had gone off like the shot heard ‘round the world, a simile that was just too good to not say out loud, and then Keith had informed Lance that actually, there have been _multiple_ shots heard ‘round the world, which may have been a line and may have just been Keith peevishly correcting Lance’s admittedly tenuous grasp of world history; after they’d gone on to have a little too much multiple-shots fun and banged the headboard into the wall so loudly that Shiro had apparently lost his temper and banged back, the sound startling Keith so badly that he’d pitched forward and nearly sent Lance careening face-first into said wall —

 

Afterwards, there’s a moment where everything’s quiet in Lance’s head, the words that usually skitter around in his brain settling sleepy and still into his bones, and he sprawls out across the bed and sort of awkwardly across one of the balled-up blankets, heart racing and breathing hard, and lets himself bask in pure feeling, like a lizard in the sun. A sun made out of orgasms. Orgasm basking.

 

“Do you think there’s a species out here that self-regulates through orgasms?” Lance muses. “Like, metabolically, not emotionally.”

 

“Probably,” Keith says. “There’s everything else out here.”

 

“Allura would probably say it’s human-centric of me to assume other species have orgasms like human ones,” Lance says. “Or orgasms at all. But I know at least one alien that does.”

 

Keith looks over at Lance, alarmed. “Did you actually sleep with Coran?”

 

“100% nope,” Lance says. “That’d be like fucking my _dad_ . Augh, bad image, bad image!” Then he remembers and adds, “And I wasn’t asking you to either, that was a misunderstanding, that was a _bad_ misunderstanding.”

 

“Yeah, I have a lot of those,” Keith says.

 

“I haven’t fucked anyone else on this ship,” Lance says. “And the only alien I’ve ever slept with is you.”

 

“Half-alien,” Keith protests.

 

“I dunno, dude, you look pretty purple to me,” Lance says. “But I’m not complaining. I don’t care. You’re a hot alien.”

 

“Oh,” Keith says. “Thanks. You are too. I mean, you’re not an alien. You’re a hot human.”

 

“Thanks,” Lance says, dryly, like that doesn’t warm the very cockles of his heart.

 

Post-coital snuggles are great, and seeing as this isn’t 2AM at an Arby’s and Lance isn’t worried about Keith keeping his hands where Lance can see them, Lance tries to go in for a little of that action. But Keith wiggles out of his arms with a wince and a shudder, a look on his face that’s a little like disgust, which…

 

You know, okay, fine. Lance definitely isn’t hurt by that. He thought that this time would be different, he thought that they’d had a moment together, that they’d had one _hell_ of a moment — or in Lance’s case, four — but if Keith wants to keep this businesslike, that’s cool, too. Lance has got plenty of very nice, very comfy pillows in his own room that he can snuggle with after he leaves. It’s just that Keith is warmer.

 

Keith doesn’t make any hints that it’s really time for Lance to be going now, though, or flat-out tell him to leave; he just settles in about four inches away from any contact with Lance, staring at him with those brand-new glowing eyes of his.

 

“That was okay?” Keith asks.

 

Right, Lance thinks, touch-averse. Or, not touch-averse. Not touch-averse at all. Just touch-specific, which apparently excludes cuddles, and Lance isn’t going to make Keith do something that he hates just so Lance can get his oxytocin on, so Lance says, “Yeah, it’s fine, I get overheated sometimes, too.”

 

“No, I meant the sex,” Keith says.

 

“Oh. Are you kidding, that was _great_ ,” Lance says with feeling. “Top marks, gold medal, a 10 from the Russian judge.”

 

Keith frowns at that. “Good. I’d never… you know.”

 

“Slept with a girl?” Lance supplies.

 

“Or guys like you,” Keith says. “Actually, not a lot of guys at all. Kind of… one. But for a while,” he hurries to add. “So I know things.”

 

“What was his name?” Lance asks. “And where did he live?”

 

“Why do you want to know?” Keith asks.

 

“So if we ever end up back on Earth, I can show up on his doorstep and kick him in the balls,” Lance says. “Or send Allura. She kicks harder.”

 

“Why?” Keith asks, genuinely confused.

 

“Um, because it sounds like he treated you like crap?” Lance says, which is not even close to everything he wants to say, but it’s a start.

 

“He wasn’t that bad,” Keith protests. “I’m just difficult.”

 

“Yeah, well, so am I,” Lance says. “And we managed just fine. We managed _awesome._ ”

 

“Took us a while,” Keith mutters, but he’s smiling shyly, his body curled towards Lance’s like a question, so close that Lance can feel the heat off his skin — and touch-specific, Lance reminds himself, Keith has already said no, but then it occurs to Lance that Keith actually hadn’t, because Lance never actually _asked_.

 

“You know, I’m pretty down with the whole post-coital cuddling thing,” Lance tries, cautiously, and then when Keith just looks at him blankly, Lance sighs and reluctantly adds, “Okay, fine, since I apparently have to actually say it out loud: My name is Lance, and I’m a cuddler. I would like to cuddle with you.”

 

“I like cuddles,” Keith says. “Or at least I like hugs with clothes on from people I know. I’ve never tried cuddles with clothes on. But not naked hugs. They’re…” He makes a disgusted face. “Sticky.”

 

“And here I’ve been thinking you don’t like to be touched at all,” Lance says. “For, like, _years_.”

 

“Everyone expects me to be like that, so it's just easier to act like I am,” Keith says. “Rather than, you know, try to be specific all the time. People get tired of specific.”

 

“Luckily, I am a genius, so I may have a solution for our naked hug dilemma,” Lance says, and rolls off the bed. “Can I borrow a pair of pajama pants? I can put my t-shirt back on but I’d rather not try to cuddle in jeans.”

 

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Keith says. “Third drawer down.”

 

“God bless Shiro,” Lance says, and heads over to pull open the third drawer down, which to his complete un-surprise is full of flannel in white, black, and red.

 

He doesn’t really want to put his underwear back on, though, and also doesn’t want to valiantly pretend to ignore the wetness that’s rapidly becoming less sexy and more uncomfortable, so he sidles into the bathroom — thank God Keith’s new room comes with an en-suite bathroom; Lance has done some awkward bow-legged walks of shame with a lot less clothing than this, but this would still be in the top ten — and cleans himself up as fast as possible before availing himself of the pants and sidling back into Keith’s room, where Keith isn’t politely looking away but just patiently laser-staring at the bathroom door.

 

“I kinda… needed to clean up. There was kind of a lot of sticky going on,” Lance explains awkwardly.

 

“Oh, yeah, that can be gross,” Keith says, and then hurriedly adds, “Not _you_ , I mean the… getting fucked aftermath.”

 

“Way to find the least sexy way of putting it,” Lance says dryly. “Do you actually like doing that? Bottoming?”

 

Keith shrugs. “Not really. But it’s sex. You don’t get everything you want.”

 

Steel-fucking-toed boots, Lance thinks darkly, but instead of throwing a fit about it like he wants to, he tosses Keith a pair of pants from the drawer and Keith’s shirt from the floor — “Oh my god,” Lance says delightedly when he sees that Keith is now wearing a duplicate of the same pants Lance snagged for himself, “we _match_ ” — and crawls back into bed with him, although he does kick away the rather… sticky blankets first.

 

“Cuddles with clothes?” Lance says hopefully.

 

“We can try,” Keith says, and scoots over into Lance’s open arms.

 

Lance tries to not be too clingy at first, but then Keith tenses up, and Lance says, “Right, yeah, sorry,” and squeezes him a little tighter, and slowly, Keith relaxes into Lance, eventually making a noise that Keith would probably go to his grave swearing wasn’t a purr.

 

“Wow, someone could actually torture you with light touches,” Lance realizes.

 

Keith snorts. “Good thing the Galra have never figured that out.”

 

“Is this okay?” Lance asks, and Keith nods.

 

“It’s good,” Keith says. “It’s a yes.”

 

“Well, check clothed cuddles off your bucket list,” Lance says. “Can I sleep here? I’d rather not do the walk of shame. I mean, nobody’s gonna be awake except probably Shiro, but it’s cold.”

 

“Sorry, but… no,” Keith says. “I can’t fall asleep with someone else in the bed, and Shiro said we have a mission briefing tomorrow morning. But you can stay for a while longer, if you want. And I don’t care if you fall asleep, I’ll wake you up.”

 

“You know what, I think I will,” Lance says. “Hey, do you want to do this again sometime?”

 

“Yeah,” Keith says quietly. “Yes. I would.”

 

“Me too,” Lance says. “Sometime soon. Like, tomorrow soon. Or maybe day after tomorrow, my thighs are gonna need a break. I really hope Allura isn’t planning on making us run suicides after the briefing.”

 

“That works,” Keith says. “I need to do laundry anyway, that takes forever. The washer only fits one blanket at a time, and it’s… kind of hard to go do something else and then come back.”

 

“Okay, 1) that was mostly on you — literally,” Lance says, “and 2) there was only two of us, we weren’t _that_ messy.”

 

“They’ll smell weird,” Keith mutters.

 

“Gross,” Lance says. “Thanks for that mental image. But hey, I’ll help, or at least distract you so waiting for the washer isn’t mind-numbingly boring.”

 

“Distract?” Keith asks. “...How?”

 

“Oh, I have some _ideas_ ,” Lance says. “But… we can also just hang out. Whatever works. Hey, I bet the laundry room has an outlet and I know where Hunk keeps his portable monitor, I could kick your ass at Mario Kart again.”

 

“Um. About that,” Keith says. “I think you forgot to actually lock that drawer.”

 

“Wait, seriously?!” Lance demands. “Why didn’t you say something?”

 

“You’re distracting,” Keith mumbles. “And I had a plan. That was kinda distracting too.”

 

“Well, thank fuck that didn’t work out,” Lance says. “Plans suck. We can do much better than that.”

 

Keith hums a little, and shifts around so that Lance is mostly laying on top of him, pressing down heavily against the places on Keith’s body that don’t hurt to be touched, and the sound travels up from his body to Lance, warm and gentle and safe. Lance really could fall asleep like this. Actually, he might be already.

 

“Don’t let me keep you up all night,” Lance says, or really, yawns. “Wake me up when you’re ready to fall asleep.”

 

“I will,” Keith says. “I need to sleep. But for right now, this is good.”

 

“Mmm, me too,” Lance mumbles, not really listening as he closes his eyes and Queen Mab finally pulls up to give him a ride, and Lance drifts off to sleep to the sound of Keith’s humming like the rumble of wheels underneath them, carrying them all forward to somewhere new.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> As with literally everything I write, this is both a heavy story and not a heavy story at all. It’s a comedy of errors about two people who are really bad at good sex and communicating trying to communicate and have good sex with each other; it’s also a story about two people who’ve been profoundly hurt by themselves and others, even if neither of them want to or even always can recognize that.
> 
> Content warnings: So much internalized transphobia and ableism. This fic neither features nor references explicit non-con, but consent issues are a major theme. This includes hints at past sexual situations that may have been dub-con, coercive, or sexual assault, although not recognized as such by the characters; references to a past sexual relationship that was technically consensual but shitty and manipulative if not downright abusive and coercive; references to past fetisization of a trans character, and self-fetisization of a trans character (yikes); consent given that, while willing, is far from joyful; gender dysphoria and body issues; hints at past alcohol abuse; hints at possible C-PTSD; what I guess I would term as emotional self-injury through sex; hints at past repressive conditioning of an autistic person; and a combination of both awful people and self-esteem issues that lead characters to have terrible ideas about what they’re allowed to expect or want from their sexual partners.
> 
> Language warnings: Lance disparagingly uses terms like “weird” and “awkward” in what could be construed as an ableist way, not out of malice but out of blithe ignorance and his own issues. As regards gender, everyone’s gender story is different, and this is just one of them; the words Lance uses for his body (both disparagingly and joyfully) may be triggering for some trans people, so if you have sensitivity around gendered body words and sexual situations, proceed with caution.
> 
> A real life cautionary warning: Testosterone is not a reliable form of birth control, and Keith and Lance make bad barrier method decisions (as evidenced by the existence of the Alabanza ‘verse). Please do not assume that if you or your partner(s) are taking HRT that babies can’t happen. (*Side-eyes past me.*)
> 
> Also, poor Shiro. That man better invest in a good pair of earplugs.


End file.
